Where did the transparency promise disappear to?

Gov. Nikki Haley ran for her position on a platform of increasing government transparency. Since taking office, she has abandoned that promise on many levels, none so great as her decision to delete emails between her and the people on her staff.

What Haley and her appointees are doing is nothing less than destroying public records. It may be a violation of the state’s public records laws, and if it isn’t, it should be.

The Governor’s Office claims that it doesn’t have the storage space to archive all of the emails between Haley and other officials. Those emails are deleted. The only email messages saved are those between the governor and members of the public.

Does anyone really buy that excuse? There’s no reason to. Private companies routinely archive old email messages. These are not large files. Small and cheap computer storage will hold massive amounts of email.

So why is the governor deleting emails, emails that otherwise would be considered public records? After all, state law requires government records to be archived and saved.

The governor may be deleting her emails for the obvious reason — she doesn’t want people to look over her shoulder and see what she’s doing. She doesn’t want the people she is supposed to be serving to be able to see into the decision-making process in her office. That may sound harsh, but when the governor is keeping this information from the people, the people have a right to be suspicious.

Many South Carolinians would like to see the emails between Haley and other officials in her administration regarding this decision. Will they be available? Or have they been deleted?

Deleting these emails, destroying public records, is nothing short of a complete betrayal of the platform on which she campaigned.